Gauteng Blog

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I watched Alexander, and I don't quite know what to make of it. It's disjointed, weird and long-winded, but oddly compelling.

Alexander sounds like George Bush (or a neocon) when he explains his reasons for invading Asia and bringing civilization to its tribes.

I have to admit that I snickered after hearing the narrator say that "Babylon was a far easier mistress to enter than she was to leave".

Alexander's bisexuality, as depicted in the film, was not particularly disturbing and it was tastefully handled. That sort of thing was probably an accepted part of Greek culture back then. On the other hand, his (possibly incestuous) relationship with his mother, played by Angelina Jolie, was disturbing.

I'd give Alexander 6.5/10 .

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Two interesting pieces from Joel on Software
- The Economics of Software Pricing [via]
- Commoditize your products' compliment
LEGO logic gates [via]
How to avenge a shark attack
The Bakwena toll road, which could turn Brits into an extension of Gauteng.
Many users don't care about spyware
Is the world becoming less dependent on America?

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I have written a few IQ tests. I wrote one in standard 4, and I never found out what my results were.

My parents also had me tested when I was 6, by a psychologist. I found the report recently, and it showed that I was far stronger verbally than I was non-verbally.

I also wrote a few free internet tests, which produced absurdly high results, but I took those with a pinch of salt.

Earlier this year, I was interviewed for a position at a software development company. I thought I had the job in the bag (I aced the interviews with the company). I was then sent to a psychologist for assessments. The personality assessments were fine, but I totally screwed up the intelligence tests. I didn't get the job.

Unfortunately, I can't get the results unless I pay the shrink, something I won't do (a bit of a rip-off, and dubious ethically IMHO). I do have a vague idea of which sections of the test I screwed up on -the stuff about completing patterns and sequences (I was tired when I took the test, as I had come back from a holiday the day before, but I doubt that my tiredness accounts fully for my poor performance on the test).

I did a few IQ-type tests for potential employers after that, as well as skills-based assessments and personality tests, and I have resolved that, if I decide to go job hunting again, I will refuse to take anything resembling an IQ test.

I don't mind personality assessments, and tests that measure specific skills, but I fail to see how figuring out what shape comes next in a sequence would make one a better developer (I think the situation is more complex than all that). (See also this.)

I avoided writing about the topic which I was job-hunting, because it might have seemed like a case of sour grapes, but since I now have a great job, I thought I'd raise the topic. (One of the things that may have landed me my job was this blog. It showed I was savvy enough to pull together a website and that I was relatively clued up on the world around me. The blog certainly didn't hurt my chances.)

The validity of Intelligence tests (euphemistically called "learning ability tests" by some companies) is debatable. Especially since such tests, including "culture-fair tests" are often accused of culture bias. Indeed, the inferior performance of some population groups on intelligence tests has provided fodder for a generation of racists., despite other explanations for these differences.

I haven't done much research into the topic, but I think that the validity of intelligence testing for employment purposes, particularly in South Africa, needs to be examined.

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...doesn't seem to work without a gulag.

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I got a Nokia 6230, and it's a nice little phone. I'm experimenting with J2ME programming, and I may post on that soon.

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My desktop computer was becoming very unstable, so, after four years, I decided to repartition (bye-bye Linux!), reformat my hard disk, and reinstall Windows XP. My previous installation was over Windows 98, so it will be interesting to see whether a fresh install is more stable than an upgrade.

My data is backed up to CD-R's, and most of my correspondence is done using webmail, so there were no problems there.

I also use Gmail to archive my important documents, as I trust the people at Google to look after my data far better than I ever would.

The only thing I lost were my RSS feeds (which I forgot to back up), although I did export the list of subscriptions, I just have to find them. I think I'll start reading RSS feeds using an online service as well, for the reasons listed above.

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Some colleagues have commented that Half-Life 2 is an excellent game.

I'm seriously considering buying a new PC, so that I can play it.

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I bought the third edition of the Gauteng Street Atlas (sold at R179,00) produced by GeoGraphic Maps cc, because it covers most of the urban areas in Gauteng in one book, something which rival companies like MapStudio don't do yet.

There are problems with the maps, with some glaring spelling mistakes ("Centurion" is sometimes spelled "Centurian", and "Brits" as "Britz"). I have noticed accuracy problems, with at least one four-way stop represented as a traffic light, and the traffic lights at the entrance to one township (Olievenhoutbosch) being omitted, along with the rest of the township. Airforce bases are mislabelled as "airports". Metropolitan route numberings are also missing on some pages, which might be a problem for some people. The pages are also quite cluttered with on-map advertising. However, this advertising has a positive side-effect - it can be used to derive landmarks.

Despite the negatives, the book is very useful, and I have replaced two old MapStudio guides (Witwatersrand and Pretoria) with the Gauteng Street Atlas. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to find their way around Gauteng, and doesn't have the money to shell out on MapStudio guides.

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The website of the Mabopane Centurion Development Corridor, which will hopefully develop the neglected western parts of Tshwane.

Now for some pedantic whining:
Some people still don't know the difference between Pretoria and Tshwane. Here, is a page that explains the difference. Pretoria is one part of Tshwane, Centurion is another part of Tshwane. Centurion is not part of Pretoria, it is part of Tshwane. It hasn't been part of Pretoria for years. The people who do the traffic at 94.7 Highveld Stereo should take note of this.

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If I was an American voter, I would have voted for John Kerry. It was in America's interest to kick Bush out of office. The big spending "conservative" who panders to religious fanatics, and lied his country into war did not deserve a second term.

But I'm not an American voter, and I am actually quite pleased with the result . To South Africans, the election result didn't really matter. In the Middle East, it's unlikely that Kerry would have done anything different to Bush. Indeed, Kerry would probably have been goaded into aggression, in order to prove that he was not "soft".

My only regret about the Bush victory is that I was deprived of the opportunity of watching the extremist Bush supporters who frequent parts of the internet melting down. Pity.

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While recovering from the flu last weekend, I caught the second half of a Bollywood movie on SABC3, called Lajja. It explored the oppression of women in India, and it didn't pull any punches.

Despite having a contrived plot, sometimes-sloppy subtitles, and awful music, it was entertaining, and I watched it to the end.

If you are stuck at home on a Saturday night, check out the Bollywood movies on SABC3, you might be pleasantly surprised.

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This woman seems to think that being critical of George W. Bush is "... a slap in the face, not only to George Bush, but if we truly believe what the Bible says . . . our Heavenly Father just got a whack in the face, too..." [via LRC]

Also check out this...interesting.... Flash animation that glorifies Bush (large download).

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How Valium comes in handy during a war
Does Al-Qaeda really exist?
The "bullwhip effect" - the magnification of demand fluctuations as one moves up the supply chain
Google launches a service to help you find files on your own computer. The download is small, but it seems to need 1GB of free space to install.
Soweto turned 100
The history of containerized shipping, using a networking analogy
Swarm-semiotics - weird, but interesting
Some links to linguistics articles and a link to this essay on sentence diagramming
Is the MP3 format losing ground?
A "battleground state" that no one really cares about
Broadband over power lines gets boost from US government
Wavelet tutorial links. I haven't checked any out yet though.
A free online book on digital signal processing. I don't know how good it is, since I just started reading it today.
A Muslim examination of Islamist suicide terrorism

I have the temporary use of a digital camera. I'll probably spend the weekend fiddling around with it.

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Eating in the Middle Ages
Salon.com's Pilot gets an imitator
How the pioneer of nanotechnology fell from grace
Scientists vote for their favourite equations
Google starts searching inside books
Microsoft and campaign contributions [via Anil Dash]

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Why Google News is not making money
Optical illusions websites:
- One
- Two
Hulking buildings making a comeback? Check out today's Sunday Times Lifestyle section for more on modernist architecture.
Wikipedia Links:

Aeroplane cellphone ban ending soon?
A series of articles from an American holidaying in India
How to evade capture

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I watched Fahrenheit 9/11, and I wasn't particularly impressed, since it didn't cover much new ground.

It's propaganda, and it has strong anti-capitalist, populist themes.

The last part, which covers the war on Iraq is probably the most effective. The visit to the White House of the grieving mother who lost her son in Iraq was gut-wrenching.

Ironically, despite the film's attack on the PATRIOT act, the movie's very existence indicates that the culture of dissent is alive and well in America. I got a fairly good impression of the American system, and it was reassuring to see that some of America's flag-waving patriots are quite unlike the cretins who inhabit parts of the internet.

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I wanted to use Blogger's spellchecker, so I clicked on the icon to "temporarily enable popups" in IE. Clicking it wiped my post from the editor...so here's what I could salvage from memory:

The difficulties of learning Cantonese
The wheel in the Middle East - lost and found [via Foreign Dispatches]
Detroit considers "reverse racism" to help majority black population [via Plastic]
"Blood doping" in athletes
How deadly are scorpions?
The Ali G guest recruitment technique
I did visit the airshow as planned, but, unlike Laurence, we saw the size of the crowd, and didn't go in, watching from a nearby hilltop instead
Wind forecasting becomes big business
The end of US welfare capitalism
Treachery in Britain during World War 2
This is quite old, but still funny: Things you would never know without the movies
A feature on an Indian website, 40 years after the anniversary of the 1962 India-China war

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If the traffic over the last few days is any indication, the airshow this long weekend at Waterkloof Air Force Base will be very well attended.

Some friends phoned this evening, and asked if I wanted to go with, and I am seriously considering their offer. I've seen some of the rehearsals, and the SAAB Gripen will probably put on an amazing display.

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Zero-gravity commercial plane rides
Food restrictions for pregnant women
Some American cities roll out free wireless internet
Is 150 the ideal size for a group of people? [via Gene Expression]
When I was young, I remember watching people eating sand

I'm swotting for a test, so blogging will be light for a week or so.

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Wikipedia Links:

American coal prices rising
The Baltic Dry Index - measuring global economic activity by canvassing raw material shipping costs
Chechnya discussion on Col Lounsbury's site

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As an aviation enthusiast, I always thought that it would be kind of cool to live near an airport....I found out today that I was wrong (I had to attend a gathering near the airport). The ear-splitting noise of jets taking off is very disruptive.

One has to wonder how the people who live in Kempton Park cope with the noise.

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Salon's Pilot on Russian airliners and post-Soviet aviation
Winglets on the 737. More information.
Bill Clinton to undergo heart bypass.
"Alien signal" report probably an exaggeration.
California Earthquake predicted by Sunday

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The building of athletic tracks

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Looming full-time employment (and a significant daily commute) mean that blogging could become less frequent.

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If, like me, you are stuck on a dial-up connection, and need to get a copy of Windows XP Service Pack 2, you can order it on a free CD from Microsoft.

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I have been intrigued by team handball ever since I watched it on TV (I think it was during the All Africa Games held in Johannesburg).

More information, and the Wikipedia article.

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I have a valid eBucks pin. However the eBucks website requires a password. I've been battling to figure out how to get from my pin to my password. I'm probably missing something obvious, but this is driving me crazy. If anyone knows, please email me, and I'll post the solution here.

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Jaw bone grown on man's back
The evolution of Olympic throwing techniques
Olympic stadium architecture
Should South Africa follow Australia's example in restricting the sale of property to foreigners?
Innocent American man freed after 40 years in prison

via LRC blog

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Some individuals are apparently outsourcing their jobs [via Mises Economics Blog]
Sentech vs Telkom
Innovation Hub takes shape
RSS starts attracting investors
Wave energy makes waves
Install Perl, DBI and Perl MySQL driver on Windows
Getting Windows to recognize a CD-RW drive that has been misidentified as a CD-ROM drive

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Choose your poison: Vitamin D deficiency or skin cancer. See also this for a discussion on the relationship between vitamin D deficiency and skin colouration
Some links that I need to store:

A new wireless internet provider

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Colin at the corner office, has answered my question about the effects of altitude and air pressure on the transporting of goods:

To answer GP's question: it is a transport issue. My aunt's sister and her hubby did a stint a few years ago as truck drivers in the USA. Transporting packets of potato chips (crisps) from California to elsewhere can be a problem: if trucks take the mountain passes to get inland, the packets explode at high altitude, due to the much lower atmospheric air pressure. If I remember their story correctly, potato chips have to be transported around some of the mountain ranges, so's to keep the chip packets intact.

(more)

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Outsourcing game playing
More comments on dolomite and housing in Gauteng.
When I went to the Kruger National Park, I didn't see a single lion, much less a buffalo kill
Why Olympic beach volleyball sand doesn't come from a beach
Reuters has picked up the story of Paul Meintjes, who, after dying seven weeks ago, remains dead
Are South Africans willing to take risks overseas because they have learned to live with risk at home?

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Scalpers find customers in Athens despite low attendance
South Ossetia - another Caucasus conflict
Wayne Wides on new development in Buccleuch [pronounced Ber-kloo]
South Asian nationalisms 57 years after partition

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Via PZ Myers, a profile of Elizabeth Loftus, a research psychologist who has done much to debunk 'repressed memory syndrome'.

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XP SP2 blues [via Scripting News]
European reactions to US troop redeployments
A silly "mercy" rule that tries to protect losing Olympic softball teams from humiliation
Maine - an American presidential election swing state.
This paper details a paradox in American presidential politics - states that take more money from the federal government than they contribute tend to vote for the Republicans.
What makes a stock "cheap"?
"How the Google IPO didn't change Wall Street"

I' m working on a project proposal, so blogging will be light for the next few days.

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On Wednesday, a petrol tanker crashed into a bridge on the R21 airport road (northbound) near the Olifantsfontein offramp.

I drove past on Friday afternoon, and traffic was slow near the scene of the accident, so that the amateur civil engineers who drove past could inspect the damage to the bridge for themselves. Idiots.

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If you are unfamiliar with the names check out the following pages that list the towns that constitute these huge municipalities:

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I noticed that the SAfm traffic report today had information about three big Gauteng municipalities (Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni), Durban and Cape Town.

It got me wondering...are there rush-hour traffic jams in Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth, East London and Pietermartizburg?

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South African Inventions [via Way South]

There appears to be some controversy about who actually invented the dolos. See this.

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Free stuff from websites making a comeback?
A brief history of cheese
Remote dorm room set up services take off in America
Fairly entertaining examination of some popular diets
Do welfare states encourage people to learn specialist skills?
Outsourcing UK medical typing to India

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Wired News decides to change Internet to internet
Why Puerto Rico has its own Olympic team
A hot sauce addict explains why he adds the stuff to everything he eats. See also part 1.
Article on high-speed switches
A file and document management wishlist

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A Kentucky Fried Chicken knockoff in New York. I remember a similar case involving McDonald's in South Africa a few years ago. [via Anil Dash]
Wayne Wides on South Africa's first Olympic gold this year
Whenever someone brings up the topic of high-rise housing, I think about the housing projects depicted in American TV shows, with crime, drugs and "welfare queens".
Call-centre outsourcing gathers steam in Europe
Interesting article on Joburg's Harrison Street

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They think that UML is a programming language.
They think that "JAVA" is an acronym.
They think trigonometry is taught as a separate subject at university.

Scary how little employment agencies that "specialize in IT" really know.

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The Simpsons episode where Homer got a chat show and spoke about inane stuff inspired this post.

I have noticed that when I go down to the coast, my half-used shampoo bottle (I use Johnson's Baby Shampoo) is crushed. When I open the lid, it pops back into shape. Presumably, this has something to do with altitude and air pressure differences between the coast and Gauteng. It could also have to do with my poor packing technique, but I doubt it. Do manufacturers have to take this into account when transporting goods? I shall do research and post feedback to this blog.
There are few things more annoying than having car hooters or emergency sirens in radio commercials. There was also the Wheatus song, Teenage Dirtbag, that included the sound of a car accident - very distracting when driving. Another annoyance is doorbells on television.

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The A-Team finally cleared [via belle waring]
VoIP - "one of those rare new technologies where the reality was far outstripping the hype."
MKULTRA - a defunct CIA mind control research program
Article that proposes the abolition of the American Electoral College

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Commentary.co.za has lots of new content, which I am catching up with now.

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Col Lounsbury has a detailed analysis of the situation in Darfur.

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1/3 of 2003 UK graduates out of work
Top 10 software programs [via Anil Dash]
Morons watch DVDs while driving
Gauteng's "land shortage". Check this post out for links to more information about the dolomite problem.
I am pretty sure that Durbanites were thrilled about the public holiday, with all the Gauteng money being spent there.
Good riddance to the Nats
I'm going to get the whole XP SP2, since it's difficult to download patches when reinstalling Windows
DataDots defeat Australian chop shops
60-70 % of online news readers are male
Lightning as art
Doom 3 review
702 interviewed the police chief in the Pakistani town of Gujarat who denied speaking to the media about an alleged "Al-Qaida plot".

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The traffic back from Durban was hectic.

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Back next week.

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Earning big money as a translator in Japan
New weapons freeze and microwave enemies
Why one New York building may have been on an alleged al-qaeda hitlist
A polling technique examined
Word of the day: autodidact
The SA blog world has been speaking about an al-qaeda threat to Gauteng. Check out the corner office for a roundup. Also check out Fodder.

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POLITICS.ZA now has an RSS feed
Sniffer dog dies of suspected overdose
Renewing a driver's licence.
Niger uranium forgery details emerge. [via mostly AFRICA] See also this analysis by Juan Cole
Q&A on Cape Town informal settlements
Rhodes University weblogs [via Commentary]
Should car prices come down? [via the corner office]
Employee error costs Canadian bank millions [via the corner office]

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Interview with Bart Simpson's voice

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Is Nancy Reagan opposed to Bush's re-election ? [via UnFairWitness]
DA's American analogue - Democrats or Republicans?
US Department of Energy analysis of Sudan [via LRC]
30 billion Windows crashes a year
New classified documents implicate U.S. forces in rape and sodomy of Iraqi prisoners [via antiwar.com]
Secular Iraqi Shiite politicians snub Iran, ally themselves with Sunnis

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What John Kerry did in Vietnam
[via antiwar.com]
Australia's aborigines
"How the 18-34 male is reinventing advertising"
Cars running on cooking grease
Nick at NjaloNjalo appears to be an expert on Cape Town's informal settlements. Richard at way South has some queries.
Tsvangirai trial update from MOSTLY Africa.

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The Darfur crisis in the Arab media.
British teenager spoofs emergency-preparedness website, gets into trouble
Will airships move soldiers in future?
Helping troops to stay awake
Movie advertising moves online
The Evil Eye in Greece, and the rest of the World
[via Wikipedia]
Nanotech hype
Egypt and Sudan make nice
Fidel Castro quotes Slate column on Bush
Secret Service agent forces journalists covering the Democratic convention to stand as a mark of respect for ~~god~~ flag
Robot scientists

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A Wikipedia article that explains what the "SAT" is.
Brain scans used to investigate crime [via The Corner Office]
French book that explains how to be lazy at work lands author in hot water

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Laurence Caromba has a post about the situation in western Sudan. Interesting stuff, but the "black" versus "Arab" take may be problematic. Check out this article [via MOSTLY Africa], and this post by Col Lounsbury [previously linked to here], on that issue.

The Gadaffi angle is also interesting:

characterising the Darfur war as 'Arabs' versus 'Africans' obscures the reality. Darfur's Arabs are black, indigenous, African and Muslim - just like Darfur's non-Arabs, who hail from the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and a dozen smaller tribes.

Until recently, Darfurians used the term 'Arab' in its ancient sense of 'bedouin'. These Arabic-speaking nomads are distinct from the inheritors of the Arab culture of the Nile and the Fertile Crescent.

'Arabism' in Darfur is a political ideology, recently imported, after Colonel Gadaffi nurtured dreams of an 'Arab belt' across Africa, and recruited Chadian Arabs, Darfurians and west African Tuaregs to spearhead his invasion of Chad in the 1980s. He failed, but the legacy of arms, militia organisation and Arab supremacist ideology lives on.

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Tomato Paste
Coffee science website [via Gene Expression]
New R5 coin
Content matters - Anil Dash on winning search engine spamming competition
Is the universe a simulation?
Baby killer locked away for life
Americans abandon land lines [via Anil Dash]
Miners in developing countries rely on primitive technology to detect gases
I'm hesitant to become an academic because I don't want to end up like this guy. [via Anil Dash]

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Admiring article on Leon Trotsky [via antiwar.com blog]
The N1 and N2 as representations of Cape Town
"How Microsoft Lost the API War"
Microsoft and weblogs

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Holocausts of Communism Test - [via LRC]
Transolar Games, the creators of the classic Quest For Glory adventure games
Interesting Guardian article on dealing with troublemakers. Part 2.
An article that defends rote learning.[via Seeker's Digest].

Fortunately, when I was in school, memorization was being phased out. I did, however, have to memorize Afrikaans poems in standard two (which made me loathe the subject, because we'd get beaten by the teacher if we slipped up).

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Someone else agrees that pigeons are vermin
Open source news
The state (no pun intended) of American federalism.
The diamond cartel isn't for ever [via Anil Dash]
Why Microsoft is unexciting
Is South Africa arrogant when dealing with the rest of Africa?
America's "indebted spendthrifts"
Residential property - a good investment?

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The kidnap and murder of Leigh Matthews is big news around here. Very sad, and I hope the scum who carried out the crime are caught.

The kidnap-murder has received lots of media attention. If Leigh Matthews had been, say, a middle-aged Chinese refugee, instead of a nubile rich white girl, her killing would probably not have received the attention that it has.

A Google News Search for "De Hua Lin" returns 1 result
A Google News Search for "leigh-matthews OR leigh-mathews kidnap OR kidnapped OR kidnapping OR murder OR johannesburg" returns 179 results.

An article in the Mail and Guardian online speculates about why this particular case has grabbed the media (and the public's) attention.

Update:Check out The Fishbowl for a post on the ANC's reaction to the crime.

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Pretty-looking site about spicy foods around the world [via Anil Dash]
Unix's Founding Fathers [via Scripting News]
Instant paperbacks [via LRC]
Crowds producing art
Microsoft gives part of cash pile to shareholders
The benefits of a strong Rand
The infamous Stander gang is in the news again
Someone decided to draw cartoons based on spam subject lines. Check it out if you are bored. [via Anil Dash]
"Salary Talk Made Easy"
This story by an excitable airline passenger has drawn some sharp words. The Pilot comments.
Warmongers eye Iran, urge support of terrorists in proxy war. See also Fodder on this topic.

One more link -
Andrew Black at Southern Cross comments on the dearth of South African public intellectuals.

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I mistakenly used Internet Explorer to write yesterday's Daily Links post, and it crashed just as I was about to publish. So today's post (written with Mozilla Firefox) will have a few extra items:

Dutch Tulip Bubble information
What makes a sport, a sport?
A foreskin restoration expert, who is called Piehl ...hahaha
Cook Sister on braais
France outsources to Senegal
Bracing for XP SP2
Volunteers who redesign bad websites
An interesting article on an American organic grocery chain called Whole Foods [via Anil Dash]
Getting around website registration
The MMR vaccine scare - do doctors understand how to do science? [via Crooked Timber]
Apparent IQ and brain structure link [via Sailer]
Speaking of IQ...I know some ostensibly bright people who have been taken for rides by Work from Home scams, or been duped into paying for rubbish newsletters (OK I only know one, but the point is that suckers do exist). I therefore have no doubt that some will fall for this new variation on the Nigerian 419 scam (assuming that the email is genuine, of course) [via commentary]
Anil Dash on leaving New York. I can't imagine getting so attached to a place.

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The Durban shooting that I blogged about yesterday, made today's paper. Utterly senseless murder:

...a Chinese family currently on asylum in Durban are mourning the loss of a family member, who was killed for an empty lunch box at the intersection of Albert and Queen Streets.

Police said De hua Lin, 48, had been walking with his brother-in-law, Mokung Chen, from Chen's clothing shop in the Berea Station when they were attacked by two youths on Friday evening.

The youths had tried to grab a plastic bag from Lin but he refused to let go of the bag, which contained an empty lunch box and papers. One of the youths shot him in the face killing him instantly.

The robbers discarded the plastic bag after discovering it contained nothing more than an empty lunch box and papers.

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Some observations:

The N3 is an excellent road.
The Free State needs better FM radio stations.
Durban is a nice little city, though a chap was gunned down on Friday evening while walking in the city centre during rush hour, when I was buying food nearby. I couldn't find any references to the murder in the papers, when I searched using Google News. Depressing that this sort of thing isn't apparently considered newsworthy anymore. I suppose the body count wasn't high enough [link via Jo'blog].
Blogger has improved its HTML editor. Spell checker still needs some work.
Everything in Durban is a short drive away. Very convenient.
First time I saw the University of Natal Campus - it's pleasantly situated.
Some women are nothing but trouble.

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Had to go to Durban for a family crisis. Blogging should resume next week.

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I hadn't noticed that The Corner Office is up again, at a new address [via Commentary]
Cooking by Numbers [via The Presurfer]
US lawmakers investigate breaking up of pay-tv "bouquets"
Neuroeconomics [via Mises Economics Blog]
Cherryflava has a post on Cape Town's ranking as the fifth best city in the world by an American travel magazine
AmbiDextri on an illogical new ICC ruling
War Nerd on Fallujah [via Sailer]
Some American soldiers watch Fahrenheit 9/11
Cape Town crime watch programs terminated after being snitched on by private security operative
The Pilot on airports
The condensed version of a new book by a serving US intelligence official
Fodder has a post on why the Iraq war was ~~inappopriate~~ ~~inaporopiate~~ wrong

Update: One more link (11:15 PM)
Col Lounsbury's Moroccan secretary seems to be trying to snare him. It's not unusual for Moroccan girls to want rich foreign husbands, from what I know of them.

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Although I've had Mozilla Firefox installed for some time, this is the first post which I'm writing from that browser. I have no choice because my copy of Internet Explorer, apart from having lots of holes, keeps crashing. I'll have to get another RSS reader as well...

I've been busy with some studying, but here are some interesting things that I've found on the web:

Antifreeze 101 - why does it taste so good?
F1: 'The balance between art and science has been lost'
The child author phenomenon
More Mozilla extensions
Cook sister on biltong. I know of at least one child who choked on the stuff, so I wouldn't give it to little children.
Scammers scammed [via Isangqa]. A very popular story, it appears.
Geolocation on the web
Bill Cosby: grumpy old man
Blogging survey [via Pharyngula]
Fodder on a campaign to promote local tourism, by locals
Scanned version of Cape Times article on blogging
Chirac fooled by apparent hoax
Multichoice complaints
Spam - new methods
Self-healing computing
Wikipedia article on Maoism
A Maoist sect's review of SimCity 3000

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"Saddam gassed the Kurds..." or did he? [via Isangqa]
Two blogs in the sidebar get mentioned in Wired News, Anil dash for his search engine manipulation win and Billmon, who is suffering from blogger burnout
F1 rules to slow cars down outlined
Article on mercenaries, some South African companies get mentioned
New study concludes that myopia is caused by lifestyle [via Gene Expression]
US medical professionals take steps to stop mistakes
Cape Town's crime problem
Why does Saturn have rings?
Bleeping out dirty words on American airwaves

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Southern Cross has a post on South Africa's unequal education system.

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I got tired of chasing plumbing faults in SimCity 3000, and, in any case, I achieved my goal of a million sim population. Back to surfing the net:

Blogosphere vs. Usenet See also this.
Paid search engine inclusion coming to an end
Laurie Mylroie, conspiracy crackpot and warmonger [via On Lesotho]
The story behind the new Nandos a campaign [via Cherryflava]
US medical professionals who refuse contraception to patients
Why John Kerry chose John Edwards
America faces shortage of VINs [via Anil Dash]
Gene Expression has lots of new posts to wade through
Wired on Mozilla extensions
The big news story around here is the Diepsloot riots. Frankly, I'm surprised that this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. Here's a story by a reporter who got a little too close to the action.

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I just got SimCity 3000. I know it has been out for a long time, but I never played it, and I am having fun building a metropolis. Regular blogging will resume shortly.

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The Axis of Fish Eggs
Toyota and Honda dominate US vehicle quality survey [via LRC]
Wikipedia article about Shinto
US military paranoia about Coke cans
Jo'blog
A Game a Day [via Refdesk, via Time]

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AmbiDextri links to stories about the South African football match-fixing scandal
War Nerd column on torture

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A biltong experiment
The Economic Organization of a P.O.W. Camp [via Crooked Timber]
Mozilla downloads increase
"The Road to Tech Mecca"
Some interesting information about lobsters
The founder of the National Review seems to have changed his mind about the invasion of Iraq [via LRC]
The Reiger Park Dreamers is a new member of the Southern Africa Web Ring
The Pilot answers some questions

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Chinese "assassination attempt" on Falun Gong protesters near Joburg?
Interesting to see a Microsoft-owned website promoting Mozilla Firefox
How the instant reviews of Bill Clinton's book were accomplished.
Patent Hit List
The Fallacy Files [via Gene Expression]
A new media column on Wired
A profile of Iraq's interim president
Tshwane metro mayor wants Parliament to move to Pretoria.

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Anatomy of an email hoax
Way South has links to the first posts of South African bloggers
Mining tar pits in Alberta, Canada
Car computer glitches
Iraq's sovereign status -how real is it?
Natal Fever, on Durban's port

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Battle of Halhin Gol - a battle in an area between Manchuria and Mongolia that may have led to the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor
The making of American ghost towns
Living it up in the Joburg inner city
The Cape times apparently had an article about South African blogs (locked in a subscriber-only archive). See Cherryflava for more information.
Colossal black hole found
Legal black hole partially closed
British leaked exam scandal widens
Pseudo-random ramblings has an item on Internet Explorer holes
Commentary has a few new items posted

Admin notice:
I probably won't be able to easily connect to the Internet for a few days, so blogging will be light from tomorrow till around the weekend.

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The world's most human-like robots
Bill Gates to start blogging?
This mildly amusing Flash game is one of Time's 50 Coolest Websites
Formula One driver reviews [via AmbiDextri Sports]
The Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory:
- Website.
- Information about the observatory

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Clinton & Slate
- The condensed version of Bill Clinton's autobiography [previously linked to here] seems to have disappeared from Slate, but the Google cache of the page can still be found here. [via LRC]
- Slate has since posted a Powerpoint version of Clinton's autobiography
Readers respond to the article about building a better light bulb [previously linked to here]
The BBC's Human Body and Mind site, full of quizzes and other diversions
Tax return information from Wayne Wides at Commentary
ANC-DA relations may be warming [via POLITICS.ZA]
Time's 50 Coolest Websites [via Anil Dash's Daily Links]
Trouble with Sentech's MyWireless?
Bush may be facing defeat in "enemy combatant" cases [via Salon.com]

Update- 01/07/2004: Slate explains that the condensed Clinton autobiography was pulled after the publisher claimed that it infringed copyright

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Flu to hit South Africa
The messy business of imperial succession in third century Rome [via LRC]
Where does space really begin?
Bloody chaos in Iraq [via antiwar.com]
Frozen food and offal make a comeback with foodies
The email space race
Microsoft has received a patent for a "method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body." [Via Mzansi Afrika and onlineblog]
Florida to tax LANs?
"Mbeki's leftward shift" [via The FishBowl]
Centurion to get convention centre

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For the cousin who phoned earlier, asking for help with Pascal loops, check these links:

I haven't thoroughly checked these sites out, but they seem OK at a glance.

I got the links from this Google search.

Call me on my cellphone if you need more help.

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A Flash version of a card game called Faro [via Mark Pilarski's column]. A website about Faro
An examination of Michael Schumacher's success
The Guardian has discovered the bizarre story about the coronation of Sun Myung Moon by US congressmen, previously linked to here
Col Lounsbury on Iraqi reconstruction mistakes
An Atkins diet experiment

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A condensed version of Bill Clinton's autobiography
Wikipedia article on the abacus
A collection of entertaining Flash games
Leaked exam paper in Britain - reminds me of when I wrote matric...
The actor who played the nerd Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation has a weblog
Wayne Wides at Commentary links to some interesting statistics from NationMaster.com
Speaking of nations, here is the Wikipedia article on Risk (the board game)

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The flight of SpaceShipOne, as it happened [via Unmedia]
The Guardian interviews Bill Clinton, who says that Nelson Mandela helped him deal with the impeachment scandal.
Wayne at Commentary has some strong views about this apparent shakedown attempt. See also this [scroll down to "Swiss Banks vindicated", unfortunately, the original Times article is locked in a pay archive].
Fodder reckons that Buthelezi is fading away
Could a South African owned beer become president?
Wireless pebbles used to track glaciers

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Here's a site that rates national flags.

An alphabetical list of flags and ratings can be found here. South Africa's flag scores 85/100.

[via LRC]

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Galileo - a European system to "compliment and compete with GPS"
The official Gautrain website
The Green Zone policy fails [via LRC]
Some solstice information
A senior American intelligence official writes a book that claims Bush is playing into Al-Qaida hands [via Talking Points Memo]
Private, manned space flight attempt to take place today Update: more on the topic at Commentary

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Some interesting Wikipedia articles:
Google's Pigeonrank technology
An American military doctor in Iraq
Fodder proposes a Google bomb
Article on Gautrain
Mzansi Afrika has a post about refugees in South Africa
Cost of War [via On Lesotho]
An American airliner lands at an air force base by mistake
Lounsbury has a few new posts up about what's happening in the Middle East

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Here's an interesting press release describing the Huguenot Toll Tunnel in the Western Cape, on the South African National Roads Agency Limited's website.

By the way, there is a proposal to rename the tunnel after Dullah Omar, the late minister of transport.

My own opinion is that renaming a tunnel is a fairly harmless waste of time^[1] - the business impact will probably be negligible, since confusion is unlikely to arise. Of course, renaming towns and streets is a more troublesome, because it makes navigation more difficult.

^[1]I'm not a conservative, but if I was, I'd welcome the idea of politicians wasting time on meaningless activities.

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An unusual type of strike by journalists, explained
Eliminating medical mistakes in the US, using IT
Evolving a faster racing car
South African government Youth Portal, [via southafrica.info, via Commentary]
The trailer for Michael Moore's new movie [via LRC]
The quest for a better lightbulb
If you watched the Michael Moore trailer, you might be interested in this. The strange actions of local politicians pale in comparison

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If you want to know why that insipid Jessica Simpson song that gets played on the radio all the time is so bad, read this
US Factory farming examined
Rumsfeld ordered prisoner to be hidden from Red Cross [via LRC]
More details of 9-11 events emerge [via LRC]
The origins of monkey gland sauce [via Isangqa]

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How occupation authorities unwind in Baghdad's "Green zone"
Prom story, part 3
Natal Fever discusses the future of the Comrades marathon
An old version of Microsoft Word remains very popular
Global flash mob
Fodder on Bush's re-election prospects
WMD's in Iraq: A wild ~~goose~~ chicken chase

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Rethabile at On Lesotho links to the story about a Zulu man who went to India to study South Indian classical music, but has had a hard time getting to perform back in South Africa. This story was also linked to by Murray at Southern Cross, who believes that the singer is a victim of anti-black and anti-Indian prejudice.

While prejudice may play a part in the lack of interest in Patrick Ngcobo's music, something that may be overlooked is the attitude of South Africans of South Indian descent toward their culture.

For example, there was an outcry by some South Indian community activists when SABC3 decided to show some Bollywood (North Indian) movies. Yet, according to SABC 3, the South Indian community seems to show little interest at the box office in South Indian movies.

According to these letters, attempts by Ster Kinekor to show South Indian movies, and South African South Indian satellite television and radio channels seem to have flopped, due to a lack of interest.

The South Indian community has been in South Africa for more than 140 years, and I would guess that Ngcobo's predicament is less a symptom of racial prejudice than a simple (and understandable) lack of interest of South Africans of South Indian descent in "their culture"- a culture that they have not been a part of for about five generations.

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I was pleasantly surprised to see that I received an invitation to sign up for a Gmail (Google's new email service) account when I logged in to Blogger. Apparently, it's quite difficult to get a Gmail account, with people willing to do strange things, and pay significant amounts for one.

I'm experimenting with Gmail, and I think that the most appealing aspect of the service is the 1GB space limit, which trounces Webmail's puny 10MB. It means that I can store as many photographs as I want to, without worrying about running out of space (although 100MB should be more than enough for me). The built-in search facility is useful.

While there are privacy concerns about the Gmail service, which searches the text of emails to display advertisements, I'm not really worried, since most of my email can already be intercepted by human beings, as it travels across the net. A machine scanning for words is far less threatening, in my opinion.

I'll probably post some more about Gmail, but for now, it's greatest impact will probably be felt by users of other email services, like Yahoo, who will find their storage space increased.

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I'm playing with my newly received Gmail account (more about that later), so there aren't many links today:

A man in his mid-twenties goes back to the prom:
- Part one.
- Part two.
- Outrage from readers
Probe rules out Iraqi link to 9-11
Should users of pirated copies of Windows XP be able to install Service Pack 2? [via Anil Dash's daily links]
Apparent US military witchhunt suffers a setback [via antiwar.com]
How the Guardian reported on the events of June 16, 1976
Symbian OS virus created [via Wayne Wides]

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Some information about dolomite and sinkholes in Gauteng.
- Pictures.
- Map of the dolomite distribution in Gauteng.
Inflation rises in the U.S.
Invisibility comes a step closer. See also this.
Bush's legal advisor has a history of obscure views of international law
"Fruit helps prevent age-related eye disease"
More details about the Enron ripoff emerge
Mzansi Afrika on the Proudly South African campaign
As you may have noticed in the sidebar, this blog is now part of the Southern Africa Web Ring

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Internet Explorer crashed as I was about to publish my daily links...so here's what I could salvage from memory:

Two sites about South Africa's climate
Were children tortured in Iraq?
Thanks to Southern Cross for the link
The difference between Pretoria and Tshwane discussed
Seven year old bloggers [via Scripting News]
Article on the Foucault pendulum from Wikipedia, with lots of links
Billmon on the increasing conservatism of the US military
Languagehat on an article about the potential medical benefits of knowing more than one language
Russian conscript hell

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Although it's a bit of a fluff piece, this article discusses Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa's plans for the province.

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While reading the comments on Crooked Timber about the crowning of the Messiah [see previous post], I found this link, to a story about a man, called Joshua Norton, who declared himself Emperor of the United States, and apparently became quite popular in San Francisco.

The local connection: Norton's parents were 1820 Settlers, and he moved to the United States in 1849 from [what is now] South Africa:

At the pre-emptory request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I Joshua Norton, formerly of Algoa Bay, Cape of Good Hope, and now for the last nine years and ten months past of San Francisco, California, declare and proclaim myself the Emperor of These United States

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I've linked before to stories about the influence of religious fringe figures on the US government. Here's another example: Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church (the "Moonies"), was crowned the Messiah in a US Senate building. Pictures here. See also this. [via Antiwar.com]

Update: Kieran at Crooked Timber seems to have also just noticed this story.

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ET goes home
How Reagan made Osama
Popcorn used to simulate oil spill
American forces score torture own goal [via Slate]
The myth of drunken pilots
Bush vs. Schwarzenegger
The intentional blandness of Garfield
A roundup of what's online from America's leading magazines
The Four Generations of Modern War

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